Much like The Founder, Gold is a story about ambition, persistence, and the American Spirit. While it's not as good as The Founder was, McConoughey and Ramirez performances are enough to give this film a passing grade.

Kenny Wells is a mess and that is pretty evident from the moment he appears on screen hoping to charm the curls right out of Bryce Dallas Howard's eighties frizzled hair, but even as he does this it's easy to tell there is no real thought behind his actions other than what the immediate rewards might be. This is key to understanding the type of mentality we'll be working with for the next two hours as Wells is a man who believes himself lucky to have been born into a family that started a mining company and who intends to carry it on even after the death of his father (Craig T. Nelson). Wells takes the idea from his father that they don't necessarily have to do this for a living as it's a crap shoot of a business, but instead pride themselves of getting to do this for a living. The question they're seemingly missing the answer to though, is the ever-present why? What are they doing this for? Seven years on after the passing of the elder Wells and Matthew McConaughey's Kenny has his men working out of a bar, trying to keep a lid on expenses, and coming up short in seemingly everything, but chiefly in keeping his family's business afloat. As a man who can't help but to try and survive for the next few weeks rather than the next twenty years Wells sees no other option other than to do whatever it takes to keep that business running. He is a man who puts a lot of stock in legacy in the way that he seems to inherently ask himself how proud his father would be were he to still be alive-would he be happy with what Kenny has done with their business? After the rather stirring opening and tone-setting title card fade away it becomes pretty clear that Kenny Wells is in a position neither his father nor his grandfather ever found themselves in. The guy is desperate to find backers for digs that no one believes in and that no one seems to believe will yield any results. Sure, Wells has responsibilities to his employees that are dedicated enough to work out of that aforementioned bar, to Howard's Kay who has stuck with him still and now works at that same bar as a waitress most of the time doubling as his secretary, but the biggest responsibility Kenny feels is clearly to that legacy he is set to taint. And so, Wells takes a chance, a risk-one that could fail just as easy as it could succeed, but one that perfectly encapsulates and sets the stage for how this protagonist McConaughey fully commits to will operate in the mostly entertaining circumstances Gold presents. read the whole review at www.reviewsfromabed.com